I saw on www.amazon.in kadence cajon with variety of wood used in . But i am new to this so i need to know which wood is best the price is almost same for all wood.
I am not a Cajon player, but a couple of quick thoughts: there is unlikely to be a "best" as everyone is different, and if there actually was a best, is expect it to possibly demand a higher price...
But not the way you think. With most musical instruments there is no "best" as people have differing preferences. And while some differences are very important to professional players, as a beginner you are unlikely to notice nuances between specific woods, so buy one you like the sound/look of.
I'm not a cajon player or builder, but I'd be surprised if there could be said to be general differences in different woods for an instrument like a cajon, where the wood is is the percussive surface, the oscillating driver, and the resonating body. If cajon players and builders who have knowledge of this want to close this question, fair enough; otherwise, I hope we're not down on this question just because the question contains the words "which is best" - meta.music.stackexchange.com/questions/2669/…
^ I mean "I wouldn't be surprised if there could be said...."
@topomorto I think I see where you're coming from and I also can't figure out how any question about what is best isn't inherently opinion based. If there were any objective basis for an answer, surely the word "best" would not be the word used in the question. Instead it would be "most" followed by the objective criterion.
Topo - I have stayed away from closing, because I hope there is something objective that can be said about cajon woods (I honestly don't have enough knowledge in that area, but am basing my comments on other instruments) - but my comment was as Todd says: most "xxx" is fine, but best probably is not
@ToddWilcox If you interpret it literally, then I agree it is opinion based. But human beings often speak idiomatically, and if a friend asked me this question, I would interpret it as "in what ways will the choice of woods affect the sound of a cajon?". Of course that won't work if the OP is wedded to the idea that there must be an objective best but hopefully that's a rare case.
@DrMayhem I also agree that if there genuinely isn't anything objective you can say about cajon wood, then the question can't sensibly be interpreted in the 'charitable' way I suggested. But given the nature of the cajon I'd imagine the wood would make much more difference than, say electric or even acoustic guitar.
@topomorto You're absolutely right that there will be big differences between woods for this purpose. Along many, many dimensions. Without any criteria whatsoever, the question will either receive _very_ incomplete answers espousing a particular wood (see the existing answer), or a massive dump of information that is hard to evaluate. (From the help center: "if your question could be answered by an entire book, or has many valid answers, it's probably too broad for our format".)
We're explicitly discouraged from answering such questions (see the second-last section at http://music.stack…
@MatthewRead Taking your last point first, I think the asker is pretty clear about the problem they are facing : they want to buy a cajon and is wondering what the considerations are regarding the choice of wood (my admittedly 'charitable' paraphrase of 'what's the best').
A beginner in this situation may not really have the ability to expand further on what they want to achieve - they might just want to know "what should I consider as a beginner buying an instrument?". We often allow those questions in the general case, so why lock it down when the person in question is happy to restrict …
@Dave that's a very old post, and there are entire SE sites that have appeared that are dedicated to product recommendations since then. Of course we aren't one of those, but our close reason against shopping questions advises against asking for recommendations for specific products, and this asker isn't doing that.
@topomorto Dr Mayham tried to push the OP that way, but the OP persists that he wanted to know which one is best. If you want to make a post that asks objectively if the type of wood affects the performance/sound of a cajon go ahead, but that's not really what the OP wants in this question.
>they might just want to know "what should I consider as a beginner buying an instrument?"
Then they should ask that. For all I know they're asking because they want to build one, which is a completely different question. I honestly don't see why it's such an issue to ask for a tiny amount of detail -- just enough that even the advocates for the question don't need to guess at what they "might" want to know.
@Dom the OP is a newish SE user and, I think, not a native English speaker, so it's perhaps not surprising he didn't take what was said as any kind of hint; I think he just didn't quite understand that 'what's the best' was being frowned on. We could say that we don't want to make any special effort for people who don't quite have the skills yet, or we could be a bit more Equal Opportunities.
@topomorto The contents of the question is the issue here. Nothing more and nothing less. We can work with the OP to make the question fit better, but if they want something we don't offer here which seems to be the case then closing it is the way to go. Please don't try and guess what the OP wants and hijack the question. Remember it's still their question.
@Dom you may be right that wasn't what he was asking. As you say, if we work with the OP, we can ascertain that; I don't think the 'working with the OP bit' happened here.
> But not the way you think. With most musical instruments there is no "best" as people have differing preferences. And while some differences are very important to professional players, as a beginner you are unlikely to notice nuances between specific woods, so buy one you like the sound/look of.
> If there were any objective basis for an answer, surely the word "best" would not be the word used in the question. Instead it would be "most" followed by the objective criterion.
"And while some differences are very important to professional players, as a beginner you are unlikely to notice nuances between specific woods, so buy one you like the sound/look of." -are you saying that as a cajon player, or someone with knowledge of the cajon?
We have tried pointing things out to the OP like the comments above. We could do more and we can always do more, but we have tried working with the OP.
"If there were any objective basis for an answer, surely the word "best" would not be the word used in the question. Instead it would be "most" followed by the objective criterion." - please see highly-upvoted meta question with, so far, only oblique answers: meta.music.stackexchange.com/questions/2669/…
The OP stated he want the best as clarification which is opinion based. There's nothing to misinterpret and we did try to work with the OP to make it less opinion based.
@Dom When natural language is involved it's rarely possible to say "there's nothing to misinterpret". There's almost always a range of interpretation possible.
@topomorto Maybe other sites have moved away from it, but it is my impression that the community here has not. In my opinion we should not allow shopping questions here.\
@Dom obviously the OP has to be involved in any process to improve a question. Part of that is ensuring that they understand what we say. My perception is that they didn't quite get what we were suggesting, but who knows.
@Dave - as for shopping questions, again, that's the (positively) uncharitable way of looking at it. The charitable way is to see it as similar to music.stackexchange.com/questions/30488/…,
With the additional mention that they happen to be buying at the moment.
At least that's the way I see it. On this particular question, I could be wrong.
There's a big fundamental difference between between what the question "Does the type of wood on a solid body electric guitar affect its tone or sound?" is asking and what a shopping question is ask.
@Dom almost any question about equipment where someone happens to mention they are in the market for something could be badged a shopping question. But if the question can be read as pertaining to a deeper underlying question about equipment, then we can focus on that and not have such a knee-jerk response to the mere mention of shopping. Ultimately most questions on this site are going to have effects on purchasing decisions at some point.
If you are trying to guess at the deeper meaning, you most likely aren't giving the OP what they want which on a shopping question is a product. This will only lead to frustration on both sides as I've seen it before on this site.
Most off-topic questions can hint at a good question for the site, but that does not mean that's what the OP wants.
Discussion on question by Parassharma…
Discussion on question by Parassharma…